Building a Generative AI Startup to $10M+ with a Virtual Team: Chris Lu, CEO of Copy.ai (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: In terms of function, it was still operating as a UI to OpenAI.

Chris Lu: Right. The early models were not as easy to use compared to the models today. There was still a good amount of work required to get good results.

Sramana Mitra: With the timing of the development of OpenAI and ChatGPT, you were coming in to a window where all of that wasn’t developed and you were offering usability.

Building a Generative AI Startup to $10M+ with a Virtual Team: Chris Lu, CEO of Copy.ai (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What kind of conversion rates were you seeing from free to premium?

Chris Lu: We got a lot of people who are international and who aren’t able to pay $49 a month. If you filter it down to the core markets – US, Canada, Australia, UK – it looks like a normal SaaS conversion metric.

Building a Generative AI Startup to $10M+ with a Virtual Team: Chris Lu, CEO of Copy.ai (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What do you offer?

Chris Lu: When we first started, we were more of a copywriting app. We help write your email copy or sales copy. However, that has transformed over the years. Our entire vision has always been the business’ business. How do we become the product that helps your business assemble and run itself?

Building a Generative AI Startup to $10M+ with a Virtual Team: Chris Lu, CEO of Copy.ai (Part 1)

Chris and Paul have built a front-end to Open AI and a significant business with over $10M in revenue. Now, they’re broadening their product capability to business workflows. We also discuss ideas and opportunities for new entrepreneurs.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background?

Capital Efficient Strategy for Generative AI Startups: Aisera CEO Muddu Sudhakar (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get into some of those questions. You mentioned Azure. Now, generative AI from the Microsoft camp is available on top of Azure as a PaaS for companies like Aisera to tap into.

Muddu Sudhakar: We partnered with Microsoft. We use their Azure Open AI. Our algorithms and NLMs are built on Azure.

Sramana Mitra: All the computing is happening on the Azure platform?

Capital Efficient Strategy for Generative AI Startups: Aisera CEO Muddu Sudhakar (Part 1)

Muddu Sudhakar and I share the perspective that the real opportunity for Generative AI startups is not in building platforms but in piggybacking on other platforms.

This conversation deep dives into the subject with real world examples and explores all the nuances entrepreneurs need to consider.

Capital Efficient Strategy for Generative AI Startups: RavenPack CEO Armando Gonzales (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: How big a deal has your infrastructure been as a cost element in the past and now? It does take horsepower to process data.

Armando Gonzales: Because we don’t have access to that type of capital, we had to build a very cost-effective system. Even these days, it’s probably less than 10% of our gross revenues. Because of the type of software and infrastructure we’ve built, we are able to operate very efficiently.

Capital Efficient Strategy for Generative AI Startups: RavenPack CEO Armando Gonzales (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: At this point, you had a customer. You understand your TAM. You are starting to execute. It’s an easier funding situation.

Armando Gonzales: Exactly.

Sramana Mitra: How much did you raise?

Armando Gonzales: $3 million.

Sramana Mitra: 2008?